Evolution.
I was using my desktop in my WSS lab today when I was suddenly alerted with SE.DLL by Norton’s real-time virus monitor after a MSIE pop-up appeared. To be honest I was kind of shocked because I have always practised safe-hexing whenever I use a computer, not to mention a desktop that is somehow “mine”.
Though puzzled, I began finding out what was the problem and the spywares involved. Tools of the trade(Spybot S&D, Ad-Aware, etc.) were downloaded to find out who the culprits were. Subsequent scans and removal procedures removed all but 2 stubborn stains - CoolWWWSearch and about:blank StartPage. And yes, A LOT others were found during the scans but were luckily removed by the programs without much hassle.
Guess I had to google for more information about these left-overs. And after many reboots into Safe Mode and back to Windows, things were finally on the right track. Finally after 1-2 hours of trial and error and googling, I finally removed them. The computer should now be reasonably clean not to cause any fear of leaking information through spywares. (I trust me.)
Meanwhile, I also secured MSIE with the proper locking downs, and used Spybot S&D to lock down the options and host files of Windows too. TeaTimer real-time monitoring is now enabled to watch over the registry for any (illegimitate) changes.
Wow, how things changed. Irritants like worms and trojans in the past were a no-brainer to remove. I can still remember writing mIRC add-ons to remove simple trojans in the past; yes, that’s how easy it was to remove irritants. Nowadays, you need more than just a tool to remove them, you need tools and massive rebootings. So don’t get caugh! Prevention is better than cure and I thoroughly understand that statement today.
Anyway, then it was time to find out how these things get into the desktop in the first place. I don’t use MSIE, and it seems like these things got in through MSIE and that’s the most puzzling part. I didn’t patch SP2, but I have at least SP1 and I didn’t think of anything else but there was someone else who used the computer - someone I don’t know has access to the computer I’m using. And he viewed some sites with MSIE that led to this problems.
Though my assumptions might sound wild and out-of-world since the lab itself needs card-access to enter, Jun Yaik and me discovered some evidences of people using our computers without our knowledges. Projects were found in the Recycle Bin and Received Folder of MSN Messenger. Amazing, there were even personal folders to put their project files in and not one, but alot of them. Feels like almost everyone has been using Jun Yaik’s computer and he’s the last to know. His MSN Messenger has another person’s usernames too. And what really aroused our suspicion was that both Sheldon’s and his mouses were oily - acts of people eating and using their oily hands to use the mouses, and this eating could explain the cockroach found in the lab.
Irresponsible users. And if they were really the ones who introduced the unwanted programs into my computer, I’m pretty disappointed with my school’s education systems as I’m in a computer course and these people in the same course don’t know better than to surf unknown sites. But that’s another story. What’s most disgusting was that the person who let them in didn’t take care to make sure everything stayed the same after usage.
I’m so utterly disgusted.
I can still remember telling my friend, “What’s the point of password-protecting the desktops? It’s private access anyway.” I’m not taking any chances now - even though the semester has ended, I still took the extra mile and protected my computer with a password that goes like…
Hey, you didn’t think I was gonna tell you the password, did you?